Lacey Louwagie's Blog, page 6
April 4, 2016
Retelling Book Review: Straw Into Gold by Gary Schmidt
Straw Into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
After years of avoiding Rumpelstiltskin retellings while I worked on my own, it’s been fun to read different interpretations of one of my top three favorite fairy tales. This book takes for its premise that the queen never guessed Rumpelstiltskin’s name, so he ended up making off with her child. As the story unfolds, the reader begins to understand his reasons for doing so. Since only the prologue involves the events of the original story, it’s really more of a “continuation” than a retelling.
This story is told from the perspective of Rumpelstiltskin’s son, so he is immediately redeemed of his villainous role in the story when we meet him through the eyes of one who has been loved and raised by him. Although the writing and voice here do not come across as effortlessly as in Schmidt’s later, more realistic work, it’s adequate for a few hours immersed in fantasy. It reminded me of the kind of fantasy I loved most as an adolescent, sort of generically medieval with a magic system and character relationships that were not too complicated.
I think my favorite part of this retelling was the way it developed the characters of the King and the queen/miller’s daughter, who came alive with all their shortcomings and vulnerabilities and wounds beneath the official titles and dignified postures. What I liked least was how little we actually got to see/learn about Schmidt’s version of Rumpelstiltskin, who was absent for most of the book. Still, it was enjoyable enough, if not among the most memorable fairy tale retellings I’ve read.
March 29, 2016
What “Cool Girl” Can Teach Us About Writing Women
Cool Girl isn’t real.
For about four years in my adolescence, I refused to read books by men.
This was because when I was 12, I was so turned off by the way Fred Saberhagen wrote about women in one of his Book of Swords installments that I figured I better stick to women authors if I didn’t want to be either annoyed/angry/squeamish/grossed out by the way women were portrayed. (Although I don’t remember many of the specifics, I do know that a substantial part of the plot involved a male character trying to figure out how he could make a mermaid human so he could have sex with her.)
I broke my “no-books-by-men” streak when I was 16 and read The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
That book restored my faith in the world. Or at least in male writers. It reassured me that they COULD write about female characters in a way that wasn’t demeaning, a thin front for a male fantasy, or just plain off.
Fortunately, since then I have come across so many male writers that do this well (Wally Lamb, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill) that I no longer have to keep a running list. More and more writers are getting a clue that writing about women is really writing about PEOPLE, not an ideology or a totally foreign species. (It probably doesn’t hurt that the publishing industry is over 75% women these days — Fred Saberhagen’s saga may not have moved forward without some SERIOUS revision were it submitted today.)
These days, usually when I come across male writers who still write female writers in a squickish way, they are mostly from a bygone era, which just prompts me to roll my eyes and wish more people would talk about the harm that is done by holding some of these books up as “classics.” (I could write a whole ‘nother post about the portrayal of women in the science fiction classics canon, but I’ll hold off on that for another day.)
Sometimes I come across these cardboard cutout/male fantasy female characters when I am doing a critique on someone else’s work. How I wish I had been available at this stage when the “classics” were being written by white, middle-class men and vetted by more white, male publishing execs.
But where does one start in deconstructing a cardboard character, in making her real? Comments like, “This dialogue feels stilted,” and “This is likely to turn off your female readers,” and “I can’t imagine a real woman thinking/feeling/looking like this” can only go so far.
Gillian Flynn may have delivered the world’s best writing advice for writing women characters in Amy’s diatribe about “Cool Girl” from Gone Girl.
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
Now, make no mistake: Amy is a psychopath and does not, by any means, speak for all women. She definitely gets some things wrong when it comes to men (I hope.) But she is spot on in her assessment of Cool Girl.
If you are writing female characters, take a long, hard look at them. Do they look more like the women you know in real life, or do they look more like the women you’ve seen in movies where character development is limited to 2 hours, with most of that going toward the male lead? If your female characters look like a generic Cool Girl or your particular genre’s version of it, proceed with caution. Sure, you’re writing fiction and none of these people actually exist.
But you want your readers — including your female readers — to believe that they do.
So as much as you might wish she existed, if you want readers of both sexes to read and admire your work — Cool Girl has got to go.
And if you’re not sure whether Cool Girl is living in your story, give it to a female reader and ask her for her honest opinion — then gird your loins, don’t get defensive, and spend some time thinking about her assessment.
Your future readers will thank you for it.
March 14, 2016
Keep the Writing Connections Alive
Neurons
Usually, I begin each day by writing in my journal for half an hour. This allows me to sort of “declutter” my mind before moving forward into the day ahead, and it also prompts me to record more of my life than I would if I was only writing when I felt like it, or when it seemed something important had happened. But I did not write first thing this morning.
I slept.
And slept.
And of course, when I woke up, it was time to jump right into work — and into a day that proved very quickly to be one of those that would make my shoulders tense and my mind whir as I tried to figure out how to get it all done. I did not write first thing in the morning, but I am in the middle of writing two news stories, both due tonight.
Still, I don’t really regret the choice to sleep this morning. I have a couple health conditions that make me a little more “needy” of my sleep than most Americans seem to be, and I’m cranky and muddled if I get anything less than 7 hours. I was still recovering this morning from the cruelty of daylight savings time snatching an hour away (a WEEKEND hour, no less, the best kind!) because I couldn’t fall asleep easily last night — my body knew it wasn’t “really” bedtime yet regardless of what the clock said. So, this only happens once a year, and it turned out I was about to have the sort of day that warranted the extra rest. As stressful as this day has been, it would have been even worse on less sleep.
It’s a pity that daylight savings happened at a time when there were things I really felt I needed to write about, though — experiences or observations that occurred over the weekend (I don’t do my “morning pages” on weekends), as well as a vivid and fascinating dream sequence from last night that will probably be all but faded, or usurped by another, by the time I have a chance to write about it tomorrow.
Skipping writing this morning made me think of a podcast interview I hosted with a children’s/YA author last Friday. One of the things she said was that it only takes 3 days for the writing “synapses” in your brain to disintegrate if you don’t use them regularly by writing. And that it takes another 3 days for them to build up again once you get back to it.
I have not researched the veracity of these facts, because I think they are helpful whether they are true or not. On an intuitive level it seems to make sense — after all, it’s much easier to gain weight than to lose it, to stay sober than to succumb to addiction, or to mess up a house than to clean it. In some ways, the fact that it takes the same amount of time to rebuild those connections as it took to lose them when it comes to writing is something of a “lucky break.” For most everything else, you need to work twice as hard to get back to where you once were.
Even so, I found myself panicking a bit when I heard this fact. It seems all too easy to go 3 days without writing — that’s a single long-weekend spent away. But when I factor in my morning pages and all the writing I do for my job, I realize that I rarely DO go 3 days in a row without writing. Although I only occasionally write on Saturdays, I almost always write on Sundays. Because of my morning pages, that leaves just one day most weeks that I don’t write ANYTHING, which is the standard I used to try to hold myself to when I was a teenager (I would write “no writing” on the calendar on the days I missed, which led to such guilt that I rarely had to do it more than once a week.)
Looks like my teenage subconscious knew a little something about the way the brain works that I should still be paying attention to now.
February 22, 2016
Retelling Book Review: Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
Guess what I did over the weekend? I started ACTUALLY WRITING on one of my novels again. It felt so good, and I’m so happy to be working on a long-term fiction project again. Cobbling together lots of smaller projects during my writing time makes me feel a little discombobulated!
I also finished Juliet Marillier’s wonderful Daughter of the Forest over the weekend, which is a retelling of “The Six Swans.” Absolutely gorgeous.
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
4.5
This book reminded me of why I used to love fantasy so much.*
Reading this, I felt totally immersed in Marillier’s world, which she accomplishes by choosing just the right details about her settings and characters to convey. All of Sorcha’s six older brothers are realistically drawn and distinct from one another; it seems it would be all too easy for them to dissolve in a jumble of names, but I never had trouble remembering which character traits belonged to which brother, despite the fact that the brothers are “absent” for much of the book. The love and devotion Sorcha felt for her family serves as the lifeblood of this story, but it is also more than that, expanding to explore issues of prejudice, recovery from abuse, devotion, and love. And even though Sorcha is mute for most of the book, I was impressed by the way Marillier was still able to convey her engagement with those around her, as well as the way her mute status invited the types of dialogue that would not have been possible if she were speaking. For example, characters told her more than they would have told someone who could repeat their words, and she often communicated with only the most urgent or basic component of what she needed to convey.
This story enriches the source material of “The Six Swans” fairy tale with a deftly drawn world including cultural tension, family loyalty, and the clash and interweaving of pagan and Christian beliefs. It stays close enough to the original to satisfy most fairy tale fans, while also creating a complete enough world to draw in fantasy lovers who are unfamiliar with or not interested in the original tale.
The ending is bittersweet in the best way, with, in my opinion, just the right amount of loose ends remaining. I heard so many good things about this book between the time it was published over 15 years ago and when I finally picked it up, and I was delighted to find that all of them were true.
* I still love fantasy, but my reading tastes have expanded so much that I don’t read as much of it as I used to when it was my primary genre.
February 15, 2016
My Writing “Retreat”
Today I did not have to go to work for my “primary” job (yay government holidays), and yet it’s still taken me almost all day to come here and write.
Once upon a time I had this great idea that every time I had a “bonus” day off from work — that is, a day during the week that I had off but that I was not traveling or doing other holiday-like things with friends and family — I would use that as an opportunity to devote A WHOLE DAY to my writing.
There were so many hours today that did not go to my writing. I volunteered with the cats at the Humane Society. I brought the car in for servicing. I walked my dog (twice — once to drop my car off, once to pick it up). I did hours of freelance work. I even did an hour of work for the job that I’m supposed to be “off” from today.
As the day wound to a close, I wondered whether I should post something here or move on to the next step in my revisions for my middle-grade novel. I have been making steady progress mapping out my revision plan using Cheryl Klein’s Second Sight, going through one item in her “revision checklist” at a time. Sometimes the suggestions feel redundant and I consider skipping them, telling myself that I know this story well enough, as well as what needs to change in it, to forgo this or that exercise. But each time I actually do one of them, I discover something new. My next item is to make a master list of everything I want to accomplish in my next draft. Truth be told, that was a far more appealing writing task for the limited time I had left tonight than writing here — but I also told myself back when my Year in Disney Movies project ended that I would come back to updating this blog regularly. And then I promptly abandoned it again for weeks.
Perhaps I am still suffering some sort of hangover from a whole year of a very public writing project, or maybe I just didn’t realize how much of a novelist I am at heart, but lately all I’ve wanted to do is retreat into revision and push the outside world — even a potential audience — away. I’ve accepted that I probably won’t ever be able to write as much as I want to, which is why I’ve made just one writing goal for this year, while I blithely ignore the passing deadlines I set for myself in August when I was working through The Author Training Manual (I think I got stuck at Chapter 2).
Setting goals and holding oneself accountable is certainly important in a writing life. But so is taking time to recover after a work week from hell, pushing all goals and responsibilities aside for time with those you love, and taking care of your body by sleeping, exercising, and resisting the urge to eat cookies for every meal. The truth is that if I stuck to the ambitious deadlines I set for myself through The Author Training Manual, everything else in my life would have suffered — I might have managed to be a more accomplished writer, but I’d also be a miserable one.
So instead I keep reminding myself that what’s important is the daily ritual of writing, of adding one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. I try to carve out two writing sessions a day, one in the morning for journaling, and one later in the day for my more “goal-oriented” writing (fiction, blogging, etc.) Some days I only am able to grab one of those sessions; once or twice a week I might miss them both. Which gives me a bit of a guilt complex, but that’s really just life.
This feels more like a journal entry than a blog post — I’m sorry that there is no real wisdom or insight here. Just me rehashing the same old writers’ dilemmas, this time in public.
If you’ve made it this far, I’d like to reward you with this wonderful episode of Writing Excuses, which is about ways to keep yourself motivated to keep writing. So much of this episode resonated with me, but what I really love is that it shows that there is more than one way to keep your project moving forward — as long as you find SOME way to keep writing, you are still a writer.
January 18, 2016
My Year in Disney Movies: Final Thoughts
Reposted from my A Year in Disney Movies blog, which was my primary writing project in 2015 (although I didn’t intend it to be!)
Well, we’re halfway into the first month of 2016, there are no unwatched movies in Disney’s animated canon, and it’s officially time to wrap up my Year in Disney Movies project — for now.
I write this post with a mixture of sadness and relief. Several people have asked me what my “next” movie blogging project will be. A couple people suggested Pixar, and another suggested (non-Disney) classic movies. My answer is: there is no next movie project.
As much as I’ve enjoyed this endeavor, I did not know when I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on January 1 of 2015 what a massive undertaking this would be. Something I envisioned as a sort of fun, side-blogging project ballooned into at least a 5-hour-a-week commitment (2 hours to watch the movie, 3 hours to prepare the post — and that’s not even counting time spent hunting down and reading source materials.) This project swallowed my writing time so that my fiction projects and other blogs got pushed aside. I posted to my writing blog only sporadically and resigned as a writer for the Young Adult Catholics blog. I took a pass on NaNoWriMo. And I wasn’t even doing everything I WANTED to for my Year in Disney Movies blog. I had ideas posting accompanying “reads” for each movie as well as reviews of the D2V sequels, but those ideas fell by the wayside within the first quarter of the project.
Still, I have now seen every single Disney movie that came out of its main animation studio. Not only that, I have read all the source materials (except for the Big Hero 6 comics because that movie caught me off guard). Even in the most unlikely weeks (on vacation, swamped at work, Christmas), I got my post up by week’s end (Saturday) so that I was free to sink into my next movie on Sunday. I was able to track down even the obscure titles thanks to a well-stocked library. (Support your local libraries, people!) I loved the conversations I had with people about the movies both online and IRL. Perhaps best of all, I had a legitimate “excuse” to deeply revisit the movies that informed my childhood as well as the ones I had “missed” as an adult. Sometimes, I felt like this year consisted of me reliving my childhood on fast-forward, as each movie would bring with it a slew of memories from when I first experienced it. (Middle school dances were SO disappointing after the ballroom scene in Beauty & the Beast!)
I also gained some insight into myself, including why Aladdin was such an important movie to me even though I don’t think it would be my favorite if I viewed it for the first time today. I also wondered whether my obsession with Disney movies as I was growing up lies beneath my inability to sit through movies more than two hours long as an adult, and my ineptitude at following movie plots that are even moderately complicated (particularly in sci-fi, even though it’s a genre I like). The plots in Disney movies are always so straightforward, even though I think it’s dismissive and incorrect to assume they are “simple” or (my pet peeve) “cute.”
My feelings vacillated between my old enchantment of Disney and a more grown-up resentment for the way it has infiltrated our cultural story. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I would never deny a child the magic of the Disney canon (with the exception, perhaps, of Saludos Amigos.) I remain, at the end of the day (or year, or canon) a Disney fan who will almost always choose an animated classic over any other movie. I also think that much of the “flak” Disney gets is totally unfounded, and based on the Disney Princess line’s marketing machine rather than the source movies themselves (especially as relates to The Little Mermaid.)
Oh, and it should also be noted that 25/55 of Disney’s movies passed the Bechdel test, with the older ones faring just as well as the newer (Dumbo was the first movie to pass in 1941, Frozen the last in 2013). Since three movies were exempt for lack of dialogue, that means only 27 movies failed. Honestly, that’s better than I expected.
So, What’s Next?
With that in mind, I am leaving this blog “active” so that I can return here with future Disney-related thoughts, and I plan to continue reviewing the new animated movies as they are released. (When I found out two animated movies are coming out of the studio in 2016, I invested in the “refillable” popcorn bucket at my local theater!) So, I am officially returning to a habit I abandoned somewhere in the 2000s: I will see the new Disney animated releases even when they don’t particularly interest me so that I can keep my list “current.”
I’m also going to post a few top ten lists here, which I’ve been mentally compiling after watching all the movies in close succession with a mix of an adult’s sensibilities and a child’s devotion.
So, without further ado, here is my official “Top 10” list of my favorite Disney movies.
Aladdin – While it’s true that this probably wouldn’t be my favorite Disney movie if I saw it for the first time today, I’m old and set in my ways, and it’s just too stressful to think of granting any other movie this place of honor. I’ve got years worth of time spent writing fan-fiction to justify!
The Little Mermaid – No surprise to me that this one held steady at its #2 position. It was also the only movie I gave 5 stars out of the whole year.
Frozen – I thought that my feelings about Frozen might just be about it being new and shiny and re-awakening all those old feelings of magic and devotion Disney used to inspire. But when I watched it again, it held its own against all the old and new faves. It’s the only movie that has come out since Aladdin that has actually awakened in me a desire to write fan-fiction again. I honestly will be surprised if Disney ever manages to top it.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – This movie was just as daring and beautiful 19 years later as it was when it first shocked and entranced me at age 15. It’s the only movie for which I watched the full director’s commentary this year. I also could not stop talking about/thinking about it the week after I’d watched it. My husband said it “seemed like this was my new favorite.” It’s an old favorite, but did move one position “up” in its placement.
Lilo & Stitch – At the beginning of this year, I didn’t even know this movie would MAKE my top 10. But along with Frozen, it’s the only other movie that gave me that “five-star” feeling of satisfaction as the end credits rolled.
Beauty & the Beast – This is the movie that has fallen furthest from its previous place of honor in the top 3. While I still loved the beautiful animation and was not deterred by arguments that the Beast is an abuser, what DID turn me off was the way Belle’s interactions with both her father and Gaston were so “sweet” and flirty. For a heroine who is often referred to as Disney’s first “feminist” princess, I was frustrated that she prioritized being “nice” over being firm when it came to telling Gaston to bugger off.
Lady & the Tramp – Although I rated this one lower than the three movies that will come after it, it remains my favorite movie from Walt Disney’s lifetime, and it has the “staying power” to rivet me every time I watch it — something that the movies lower on the list have never quite put to the test because I didn’t rewatch them as often as those higher up. It has a sort of restraint and maturity that sets it apart from the other movies of its era, and the other “animal” movies in general.
Mulan – Another one of those movies that gets better with age. Whereas I used to drool over Shang, I can now see that Mulan is the real prize in this movie.
Tarzan – SUCH a huge improvement over the source material, stunning animation, and, well, JANE.
Atlantis: The Last Empire – Because if you lined all the Disney dudes up for me in a dating game, I would totally go home with Milo.
January 5, 2016
2016 – A New Year For Writing
It’s a new year, which means a new writing resolution.
This year, I have only one: to put my middle-grade novel through another rigorous revision and submit it to an editor who has given me permission to do so.
It also marks the end of last year’s writing project, A Year in Disney Movies, which ballooned into much more than I expected. What I thought would be a little “side-blogging” endeavor ended up swallowing almost all my writing time, as each post took about five hours to compose: two hours to view the film, and three hours to write the review. Since my work schedule rarely affords me three hours at a stretch, that meant it usually took me three days to write a single post, after which there weren’t a lot of days left to sink into my longer writing projects. Somehow I managed to finish the second draft of my Rapunzel novel in all that as I tried not to get too depressed about my goals for my other projects falling by the wayside. Although I made so little project on my novels in 2015, I continued to write about 15 pages a week in my journal in addition to the Disney blog. I kept telling myself that I hadn’t stopped writing, although without making any progress on a novel, it sometimes it felt that way.
I am not totally done with A Year in Disney Movies — this week I have to post on the last movie in the animated canon, Big Hero Six. I watched the movie last night but am having trouble mustering up the motivation to write about it — probably because I know there isn’t another movie waiting on its heels this weekend.
I also hope that with my Disney blogging project off my plate, I will get back into the habit of posting here on a regular basis. Here’s to my first attempt!
Do you make writing resolutions? What are they?
December 20, 2015
Bring it on, 2016 Reading Challenges!
For the last six weeks, I’ve sort of been obsessing over which reading challenges I will do in 2016. I was particularly interested in checklist-style challenges, such as “read a book written by an African American,” “read a book retelling a fairy tale,” etc. I like my challenges to give me a little “guidance” but not to tell me to read specific books. I also don’t like the ones that are a little too open, such as, “Read six books in ABC genre.”
Well, I am officially DONE seeking these challenges as I am now overwhelmed with more than I can possibly tackle in a year.* (Maybe I should move to a planet where the years are longer?) I decided on three challenges, which will total 88 books. Since I usually read 100 books in a year, this seems doable while still giving me a little bit of wiggle room to stray from the challenges.
So, without further ado, I am planning to tackle
The Goodreads Around the Year in 52 Books Challenge (52 books) – Because I am excited by many of the categories, it has a good amount of variety and flexibility, AND it comes attached to a handy Goodreads group as a resource, which includes suggested books for almost every week if you get stumped. That will really help me for some of the genres I don’t read much, such as the top 100 mystery books list.
The Into the Forest 2016 Reading Challenge (12 books) – Because I am a member of the Into the Forest group on Goodreads, and have enjoyed the community there immensely. Into the Forest is focused on fairy tales, myths, and legends, so this whole challenge list is centered on that genre. Since it’s one of my favorite genres, this challenge ensures that I’ll have these types of books sprinkled throughout the whole year.
The Book Riot Read Harder Challenge (24 books) – Because it’s got the coolest name, and because I like Book Riot’s mission of pushing people to read beyond what is bestseller and/or mainstream.
I plan to tackle the challenges roughly in order, but to be flexible when the opportunity arises, such as if one of my book club books fits an item further down the list. I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll allow a single book to fulfill items on more than one list.
I also passed up on a few very tasty challenges in case someone else might be interested:
The Popsugar Reading Challenge – I felt bad for passing on this one because I waited for it FOREVER. But its categories just didn’t excite me as much as the Goodreads 52 books one did.
The BookaShelf Reading Challenge – This was the first reading challenge I found this year, and it’s got some really fun items on it (like a book with a cat on the cover, or a book about water). But it also had some items that would be pretty hard, such as finding a book about a character with the same name as you, or a book where no one gets killed — how would you know before reading it?
The Anna’s Nook Reading Challenge – This one came to my attention after I had already chosen to do the three challenges above, or it would have been a serious contender. I was a little intimidated by the specificity of some of these items, such as reading a book that was originally written in a “minor” language or reading books your mom and dad liked at your age. Since I try to satisfy as many challenge items as possible from my own collection, this one seemed the challenge most likely to require me to go beyond my own bookshelves.
I also ultimately passed on the Color-Coded Challenge and because they weren’t substantial enough for me.
What’s kind of ironic is that the reason most of these challenges exist is to push people to read more WIDELY than they usually would, to encourage them to step outside their comfort zone, etc. But my own reading tastes are so eclectic (a Goodreads librarian once told me that looking at my book list gave him ‘whiplash’) that I use these challenges to NARROW my reading scope. Because I am addicted to those library booksales where you can fill a grocery bag for $5, as well as bookswapping sites, I have amassed far more books than I’ll ever be able to read (at my current rate, if I didn’t buy ANY more (ha ha ha), I could possibly read through my collection in 10 years.) So when it comes time to choose a new book to read (one of my favorite things to do EVER), I get overwhelmed if I have to consider my whole collection. It helps to have a “system” in place to focus me, and in the last couple years I’ve found reading challenges fill that role quite nicely.
What about you? Will you be participating in any reading challenges this year? Leave a comment with your 2016 reading plans!
*Special thanks to Xxertz, who alerted me to many of these challenges in a comments thread on my earlier post.
December 7, 2015
100 Normal Days
Last Friday, I was listening to the Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast titled #Blessed, which was about the way women choose to portray themselves on social media. That prompted me to take the following photo and post it:
A photo posted by Lacey Louwagie VenOsdel (@laceyvenosdel) on Dec 4, 2015 at 3:56pm PST
When I told my husband about this experiment, he was like, “But isn’t the whole point of social media to share the highlights? I mean, who’s really going to care about the mundane stuff?”
This is a valid question, and one that I am asking myself. After all, isn’t it even more self-centered to believe that someone would be interested in my dirty dishes than to believe they would be interested in the funny thing my cat did?
But what I kept coming back to is the research that shows scrolling through images in social media is prone to making people depressed. One of the theories behind this is that we have a tendency to compare our real, messy lives with the polished, perfect lives that seem to be presented through our friends’ and acquaintances’ social media feeds. We can forget that we aren’t the only people whose lives aren’t bursting with beauty and love at every moment.
We see beautiful birthday cakes, but not the dirty dishes in the sink or the crumbs all over the stove.
We see adorable smiling babies but not the dirty diapers or the hours of crying
We see glittering engagement rings and smiling brides, but not the fights or the tensions that are present in all relationships
We see the job promotions but not the messy desks and late nights at the office
Ever since owning my own home, I’ve found myself feeling irritated by how “perfect” houses on TV and movies are. I feel relieved when I see a cluttered or a messy house. I wrote about this a little more extensively in my Year in Disney Movies post about Lilo & Stitch, but essentially, I wonder if my longing to see messy houses on TV might find an echo in a secret longing to see that other people’s lives are just as mundane as yours is.
Which is why I’m going to continue exploring this idea of highlighting the ordinary and the mundane that makes up the majority of most of our lives. A couple years ago, I did the #100HappyDays project. While I think finding the bits of happiness in every day is a noble endeavor, my particular experience of those 100 days was fairly traumatic. My cat died in the midst of it, and while some might say that those are the moments when I MOST needed to appreciate any moment of happiness I could find, I also felt like a total fake. And the experience so scarred me that I’m superstitious about ever participating in #100HappyDays again.
But I’m going to try something new starting tomorrow, and that is to document #100NormalDays. Apparently I am not the first person to have tried this.
What is the point of posting photos of dirty dishes, unmade beds and office cubicles? Part of it is to appreciate the normalcy that makes up my own life and the lives of most of those around me. Part of it is to push back against the culture of social media, and our tendency to turn our feeds into brag reels. And part of it is just to document real life, as unfiltered as possible (literally — no messing with the Instagram filters for this project.) And perhaps the greatest part of it is for me to discover something new about myself or my life by doing this.
Why am I announcing this on my blog that is supposed to be about writing? Because I look at projects such as this one as an extension of the pages I write in my journal every morning, as part of my compulsion to record the mundane and beautiful and painful moments of my life as if they matter — and not to listen to a world that tells us they don’t.
November 30, 2015
Retelling Book Review: Call Me Ixchel – Mayan Goddess of the Moon by Jamie Havemeyer
Call Me Ixchel: Mayan Goddess of the Moon by Janie Havemeyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book ended up being better than I expected it to be. At first, the book’s tone was really off-putting, trying too hard to be conversational and “modern” in a way that didn’t jibe with the ancient Mayan setting. Even if one buys into the idea that goddesses are immortal regardless of whether people continue to believe in them, it’s jarring to hear one refer to herself as a “rockstar” in the first-person or to compare the size of an ancient ball court to a modern basketball court. Still, once I was able to get past the tonal issues, I appreciated this book’s age-appropriate handling of a possessive/abusive marital relationship and Ixchel’s strength in overcoming it.
This book may have fallen into two-star territory if not for the impressive backmatter. I loved the accessible notes that served as a non-intimidating entry into Mayan mythology for kids who were exposed to it for the first time. Especially helpful was the “Established myth/fact/fiction” chart that detailed where certain parts of this retelling came from. Since I am as unfamiliar with Mayan mythology as the typical 9-year-old, I found this all to be very educational. I also liked the final chapter, “Ixchel Today” in which Ixchel gave a brief overview of how her legacy has lived on despite the colonization of Mexico.
As educational fodder, this is good, accessible stuff that could well spur kids’ interest in history, ancient mythology, and other cultures. As fiction asked to stand on its own merits it is less successful, although it’s nice to see a publisher tackling some lesser-known mythology for a young audience.
